


Distance in Lightyears

by EatingDirtForFunandProfit



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: 707’s real name, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male!MC, Pseudo poetry, Rated T for language, Space Metaphors, christmas fic (kinda), slightly based on the Christmas dlc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EatingDirtForFunandProfit/pseuds/EatingDirtForFunandProfit
Summary: I bring his hand up to my lips and kiss it, winking at him. He giggles, and it’s bright, and his smile is bright, and it’s dark out but he’s bright, he’s bright.—————If you like overly poetic space metaphors and vauge allusions to christian guilt and ALSO want to hold hands with Seven on the hood of his sports car then THIS is the Drabble for you. Probably.





	Distance in Lightyears

**Author's Note:**

> hello it’s me, crawling back to this account after almost a year or something. This is my first fic in the MysticMessenger fandom, so that’s... neat?
> 
> This is just some super self indulgent fluff because the Christmas dlc gave me Feelings™️. I couldn’t find a lot of fics where MC agreed with Seven about Christmas, and I really wanted one so. I wrote it.   
> I know for lots of folks christmas is like, a totally secular thing, and there’s plenty of people who don’t celebrate it/care about it for other reasons, but for me it just??? Brings up some stuff.   
> Basically I love Seven and have a complicated relationship with holidays what’s UP
> 
> This might become part of a series, bc I consider it in line with a “canon” that I’m planning, but hey you know, what happens happens.  
> You can find me on tumblr as @Vanderwont, I’ll be posting this there, too.  
> Ok bYE

It was Christmas Eve. But not to us. To us the night was just a night, a good, clear night, world flashing by as we sped down the highway. Back in town, bright colored lights glowed in the windows, presents stacked high under trees. But in the red sports car it wasn’t even December. It wasn’t anything, because it didn’t have to be. 

Warm hands clasped together in good Christian households everywhere, thanking God for the turkey, thanking God for the fire, thanking God for the warmth.

On the hood of the red sports car, parked in the middle of nowhere with the clearest view of the sky, laughs puffed out of mouths like steam. The cold air burned Saeyoungs face behind his glasses, growing useless with fog.   
My spine hit the hard metal of his car like a shit mattress, but I’d slept on worse.  
We both had. 

We could see the city spread out like this, see the little lights twinkling, meaningless at this distance, harmless. It all looked so small from here. I held a thumb and a finger in front of me and crushed the tallest building.  
“Like a city for ants.” I said.  
Saeyoung snickered.

He turned his gaze up. I turned mine to his face. I loved the sky, always, but I had spent enough time watching it alone. Things I’d done all my life looked so much better reflected in his eyes. I could never stop watching him.   
Watching him think was like watching a star collapse at the highest possible speed- seeing the whirls form as space dust is gradually pulled back together to form something fantastic only to start the cycle over.

“I’m sorry we can’t have a normal Christmas.” He whispered.

It felt sacred. It felt like confessional.

“I’m not.” I whispered back.

Spitting secrets in the dark, together.

“Why not?” I hummed, looking back up at the sky.

“It’s hard to explain. If Christmas is something you want, I’d be fine, but that’s because it’s with you, so it wouldn’t be normal anyways.”  
He laughed, and I turned awkwardly on my side to face him.  
“That’s the thing, right? With you things never have to be normal. There’s nothing you need me to be or do.”

Sensing my seriousness he turned his head to look at me. It made his glasses crooked, but I could still see his eyes. I’d never been particularly well defended against them, and tonight they wanted me to say something I meant. Anything.

“When I grew up, Christmas had to be normal. You had to be happy on Christmas, yknow? Cause it’s Christmas. But if it isn’t Christmas, if it isn’t anything, then we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to pretend.”

His face was unreadable. I reached out to cup his cheek with a hand. It felt cold, like everything that wasn’t covered in layers of coats. 

“I’ll take you to the space station. And they you’ll never have to pretend again.”  
His voice was promises, light and pleading and delicate.  
“I don’t want to go if you’re not coming with me.”  
His breath shuddered, and I scooted towards him.  
“You shouldn’t have to pretend either.”

His face felt wet, and without needing to be asked, I turned to the sky, pulling him close.  
He curled into my side, tucking his head under my arm. I ghosted my fingers over his hair, not really doing anything, just for the way it felt.

“Tell me about it. The space station.”  
I looked down at him, but he had buried his face in my side.   
“Yeah?”  
“...yeah.” He was a little muffled, and his voice sounded small, like we were hiding from something out here, and he needed me to tell him we were safe.

“Alright, space boy. But I can’t promise you scientific accuracy.”  
His chest shook a little with a quiet giggle, and he muttered something that sounded like ‘fuck science’, and we were both laughing.  
When it died down, I looked back up at the sky, thinking.

“I think... if it was our space station, it wouldn’t look like the ones out there anyways. We wouldn’t be from any discovered galaxy. We’d get one all to ourselves, so we can keep exploring without running into anyone.”

I looked back down and ruffled his hair a little.  
“You’d be our engineer, and pilot. I’d be the dashing captain. You’d make me a really cool gun, and I’d go around saving people and doing nerd shit like studying alien plants and languages.”

“Does the Captain fall for the engineer?”  
I didn’t have to see his face to know what expression he was making.

“Of course he does. You’re always looking out for him. You’re a call away, even if the captain took a ship to another star system. You’re the reason the station exists, you’re why he can go all the places he does. When someone’s that amazing, how can you not admire them?”

“...Why does the captain keep coming back?”

“Hmm?”

“Why the station? He sees everything, planet after planet... why come back?”

I look up. The starts glitter down at me from the void, making me feel like gravity is falling apart enough for me to fall up, up, up.

“I think... the worlds are fascinating, and strange, and new. They’re beautiful, and dangerous, and... strange. I think the captain likes being in space because nothing truly made sense to him on earth. If the only rule for a new planet is that it won’t be like the last one, why would you need to know anything, really?”

“That’s...”

“Shush. I’m getting there.  
Nothing on earth made sense until he met you. He felt like... you understood him, and maybe, just maybe, he’d get to understand you too. You gave him the security that the planet gives most people. Like if he has this one anchor, it’s alright if everything is... unknown. You’re as fascinating as a planet, to him. You’re... endless. There’s always something new, always a new invention, a new adventure. The difference is... that you feel like home. Not like a house, because you can know everything about a house, but like a planet.”

“...I didn’t expect you to take this so seriously, MC.”

He was leaning over me now, our breath forming one cloud instead of two.

“Neither did I, to be honest.”

He hooks a leg over my waist, then he’s straddling me on the hood of his car in the cold night air.  
Perhaps not elegantly, but nothing on the hood of a car can be done elegantly, I’ve found.

“I think the engineer falls for the captain, too.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because he’s hot.”

I nearly knock Saeyoung off my lap laughing. 

“Jackass.”

“It’s true~! Oh, captain~”

He’s wiggling around like a dork, making dramatic faces at me and my chest hurts from laughing so hard.

We stay on that hill for a long time. Long enough for the cold to seep in through our coats, long enough for our cheeks to hurt from smiling. 

Eventually we retreat to the heated car, but we can’t bring ourselves to leave. Saeyoung reclines his seat and mimics the sound as it goes backwards. I laugh at him and do the same. Once we’re lying down as far as it allows, he grabs my hand, and we just lie there for a moment.

“We could sleep here, you know.”

I laugh.   
“Don’t waste gas, Saeyoung.”

“I’m serious!” He says, but he’s laughing too.

“What if we just... never go back? I’ll just keep driving. And we’ll get food at gas stations.”

I indulge the fiction. I always do.

“Mmhm. We’d get all our clothes from strip malls and sleep on the bedding sections of big furniture stores until we got kicked out.”

“I always wanted to play house in those fake kitchens in stores like that!”

“Ha! God, me too... you’re the only person I want to piss off mall security with, babe.”  
I bring his hand up to my lips and kiss it, winking at him. He giggles, and it’s bright, and his smile is bright, and it’s dark out but he’s bright, he’s bright.

We stay like that, imagining life on the road until my eyelids grow heavy and he starts to yawn.

“Our backs will hate us in the morning if we sleep here.” He admits.  
“My back always hates me, but you’re right.”  
“Hah... I don’t want to go back to earth yet.”  
“I’ll wait for you.”  
I mean it. It’s so simple to me, to mean that. It just falls out of my lips on instinct, a natural response.

He’s silent for a minute, starts collapsing and reforming. I wait it out.

“...I love you, MC.”

“I love you too, Saeyoung.”

It’s not an assurance or a promise or a gift. It’s just truth, whispered in the dark where nothing was expected, and we swim in the heaviness of being honest.

It’s new to us.


End file.
